Bulky casts on broken hands didn’t make for easy day for UK’s linebackers

It’s hard to know how much having both middle linebackers with casts on broken hands slowed the Kentucky defense against a potent Georgia rushing attack, but Coach Mark Stoops knows “it doesn’t help.”

Both Kash Daniel and Jordan Jones were outfitted with bulky casts. Daniel played that way a week ago, but Jones was learning how to play through the injury, which he suffered on Wednesday at practice.

Both reserve linebackers were in the game when Georgia’s D’Andre Swift made that long, 83-yard run that helped put the game out of reach, 28-3, with eight minutes to play in the third quarter.

“As experienced as we are, when you take those guys out of the middle, you go to very inexperienced,” Stoops noted. “But I thought they did some good things and it doesn’t help with two guys in there trying to tackle with those on.”

Jones had nine tackles in the loss. Daniel had four tackles, but he didn’t want to use the apparatus on his hand as an excuse.

“I elected to play through this and Jordan elected to play through this,” the junior said. “We don’t want to miss a second of this team. We don’t want to miss a second of our brothers. That’s who we fight for.”

It says a lot about both of them that they’re willing to play through the discomfort, Daniel said.

“Some people don’t understand how hard this stuff is and what you’ve got to go through,” he said. “It’s hard to tackle, especially if you’re a linebacker. Like I said, we’ve got to learn to play with our cast or whatever we’ve got on our arm. We’ve go to learn how to adapt and tackle.”

This story was originally published November 3, 2018 at 9:44 PM.